The invention concerns a jettisonable device comprising means with a travelling-wave tube for emitting electromagnetic waves.
Generally, given that during the jetison stage, the jettisonable device is no longer connected to the carrier, an internal power supply device of the cell or battery type is generally provided, able to supply the very high voltage of the travelling-wave tube after jettisoning.
However, the cell or battery is triggered just after jettisoning.
This means that the cell, which is generally of the thermal cell type, is not immediately operational. It takes a few fractions of a second for its potential energy to become available, which jeopardises proportionally the efficacy of the electromagnetic wave emission.
A known solution consists of using travelling-wave tubes with a rapid-heating cathode, taking less than one second to heat, but this has the drawback of being very costly, which is incompatible with consumable objects.